Sculptor Roger Terence Barr was born to Clinton and Inez Barr in Whitefish Bay, Milwaukee, Wisconsin on September 17, 1921. He studied art in Wisconsin before enlisting in the US Navy during WWII where he served as a pilot and as the flight deck officer of the USS Fanshaw. He married in 1947 and divorced six years later.

After returning from the war he studied and taught art in New Mexico and Los Angeles, California before moving to Paris, France where he opened his studio and school in the same building as the now famous Atelier 17. While there he taught at the American College in Paris during the early 1960s and was director of the American Art Study Abroad between 1959 and 1969. He married for the second time in 1959 and divorced eleven years later.

Barr returned to the United States in 1969, moving to Santa Rosa, California where he met and married his third wife, British-born printmaker/teacher Elizabeth Quandt in 1971. During his time in California he worked mostly in monumental stainless steel sculpture. Barr also taught in San Francisco and Hayward, and Santa Rosa, California.  Roger and Elizabeth traveled extensively through England, France and Japan.

Barr's monumental sculpture "Skygate" of 1985 was the first corporate public art work placed at the Embarcadero in San Francisco, a 26 foot high stainless steel arched sculpture near Pier 35 that was dedicated to longshoreman-philosopher Eric Hofer whose friend, journalist Eric Sevareid, called "A shining link between sea and sky."

After Roger and Elizabeth divorced he moved to Southern California to Joshua Tree where he continued to work until his death on January 7, 2000 due to complications of a life-long battle with diabetes.